ST. LOUIS: Vandals have targeted monuments dedicated to the leaders and soldiers of the secessionist, pro-slavery South of the Civil War era, painting the slogan “Black lives matter” on Confederate memorials in a half-dozen states.
The graffiti reflects the racial tension of post-Ferguson America, more than a week after a white man was accused of shooting and killing nine black congregants at a Charleston, South Carolina, church.
Michael Allen, a lecturer in American culture studies at Washington University in St. Louis, compared the vandalism to the toppling of statues in Russia at the end of the Soviet empire.
“If the monuments are strong statements of past values, defacing them is the easiest and loudest way to rebuke those statements,” Allen said. Confederate symbols, including the rebel battle flag, have been the subject of resentment for years. The anger boiled over after last week’s massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The suspect, Dylann Roof, had posed in online photos with the Confederate flag.
Politicians throughout the South are taking steps to remove the flag from public places. Black activists say the monuments should meet the same fate.
Racial wounds in the US were torn open last August, when a white police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri, fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was black and unarmed. Officer Darren Wilson was cleared of any wrongdoing. “Black lives matter” has become a rallying call in protests that followed police violence against black men in other cities.
One of the defaced monuments was the Confederate Memorial in St. Louis’ Forest Park, near Ferguson. The same graffiti was reported on memorials in Charleston; Baltimore; Austin, Texas; Asheville, North Carolina; and Richmond, Virginia. No arrests have been made.
With the Charleston shooting refocusing attention on Confederate symbolism, experts said, it isn’t surprising that some people would take out their anger on monuments to those who fought on the side of slavery.
Elizabeth Brondolo, a psychology professor at St. John’s University in New York who studies the effects of race on mental and physical health, said the defacing of memorials reflects a “consensus that there’s been a very serious failure of empathy, a failure to understand what these symbols might mean to people who suffered from slavery and ongoing aggression.”
The future of the 101-year-old statue in St. Louis was already in doubt. In April, Mayor Francis Slay ordered a study of what to do with it. Options include removing it.
Efforts have also begun to seek removal of Confederate monuments in Nashville, Tennessee; Shreveport, Louisiana; Orlando, Florida; Portsmouth, Virginia; and Birmingham, Alabama.
Confederate monuments in US defaced by vandals
Confederate monuments in US defaced by vandals
Bangladesh halts controversial relocation of Rohingya refugees to remote island
- Administration of ousted PM Sheikh Hasina spent about $350m on the project
- Rohingya refuse to move to island and 10,000 have fled, top refugee official says
DHAKA: When Bangladesh launched a multi-million-dollar project to relocate Rohingya refugees to a remote island, it promised a better life. Five years on, the controversial plan has stalled, as authorities find it is unsustainable and refugees flee back to overcrowded mainland camps.
The Bhasan Char island emerged naturally from river sediments some 20 years ago. It lies in the Bay of Bengal, over 60 km from Bangladesh’s mainland.
Never inhabited, the 40 sq. km area was developed to accommodate 100,000 Rohingya refugees from the cramped camps of the coastal Cox’s Bazar district.
Relocation to the island started in early December 2020, despite protests from the UN and humanitarian organizations, which warned that it was vulnerable to cyclones and flooding, and that its isolation restricted access to emergency services.
Over 1,600 people were then moved to Bhasan Char by the Bangladesh Navy, followed by another 1,800 the same month. During 25 such transfers, more than 38,000 refugees were resettled on the island by October 2024.
The relocation project was spearheaded by the government of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted last year. The new administration has since suspended it indefinitely.
“The Bangladesh government will not conduct any further relocation of the Rohingya to Bhasan Char island. The main reason is that the country’s present government considers the project not viable,” Mizanur Rahman, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner in Cox’s Bazar, told Arab News on Sunday.
The government’s decision was prompted by data from UN agencies, which showed that operations on Bhasan Char involved 30 percent higher costs compared with the mainland camps in Cox’s Bazar, Rahman said.
“On the other hand, the Rohingya are not voluntarily coming forward for relocation to the island. Many of those previously relocated have fled ... Around 29,000 are currently living on the island, while about 10,000 have returned to Cox’s Bazar on their own.”
A mostly Muslim ethnic minority, the Rohingya have lived for centuries in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state but were stripped of their citizenship in the 1980s and have faced systemic persecution ever since.
In 2017 alone, some 750,000 of them crossed to neighboring Bangladesh, fleeing a deadly crackdown by Myanmar’s military. Today, about 1.3 million of them shelter in 33 camps in the coastal Cox’s Bazar district, making it the world’s largest refugee settlement.
Bhasan Char, where the Bangladeshi government spent an estimated $350 million to construct concrete residential buildings, cyclone shelters, roads, freshwater systems, and other infrastructure, offered better living conditions than the squalid camps.
But there was no regular transport service to the island, its inhabitants were not allowed to travel freely, and livelihood opportunities were few and dependent on aid coming from the mainland.
Rahman said: “Considering all aspects, we can say that Rohingya relocation to Bhasan Char is currently halted. Following the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s regime, only one batch of Rohingya was relocated to the island.
“The relocation was conducted with government funding, but the government is no longer allowing any funds for this purpose.”
“The Bangladeshi government has spent around $350 million on it from its own funds ... It seems the project has not turned out to be successful.”
